"The care of the great roads was committed to the districts through which they passed, and a large number of hands was constantly employed to keep them in repair. This was the more easily done in a country where the mode of travelling was altogether on foot; though the roads are said to have been so nicely constructed that a carriage might have rolled over them as securely as on any of the great roads of Europe. Still, in a region where the elements of fire and water are both actively at work in the business of destruction, they must without constant supervision have gradually gone to decay. Such has been their fate under the Spanish conquerors, who took no care to enforce the admirable system for their preservation adopted by the Incas. Yet the broken portions that still survive here and there, like the fragments of the great Roman roads scattered over Europe, bear evidence of their primitive grandeur, and have drawn forth eulogium from the discriminating traveller; for Humboldt, usually not profuse in his panegyrics, says, 'The roads of the Incas were among the most useful and stupendous works ever executed by man.'" With the revival of human thought and civilization after the Middle Ages, the improvement of the roads engaged the attention of public and scientific men, and became once more an object of government; but for a long time the rulers who concerned themselves about roads thought more about repressing the crimes of violence and extortion thereon than they did about improving their condition for travel. The first act of the English Parliament relative to the improvement of roads in the kingdom was in 1523; yet in 1685 most of the roads in England were in a deplorable condition. Macaulay says that on the best highways at that time the ruts were deep, the descents precipitous, and the way often such that it was hardly possible to distinguish it in the dark from the unenclosed heath and fen which lay on both sides. It was only in fine weather that the whole breadth of the road was available for wheeled vehicles; often the mud lay deep on the right and on the left, and only a narrow track of firm ground rose above the quagmire. It happened almost every day that coaches stuck fast until a team of cattle could be procured from some neighboring farm to tug them out of the slough. But to the honor of England, this condition of her roads was not allowed to continue very long. Although her progress in trade and prosperity has been marvellously rapid, yet such progress can be measured by the improvement of her roads, which are now unsurpassed anywhere in the world.